Brighter Than The Stars: Book One

Second Alternate Direction To Version One: Part 2

A light wind cut through the humidity of the night, rustling through the leaves and causing thin branches to cast shadows through the moonlight. It felt so silent as she laid there, the grass damp and soaking though her clothing. The night always belonged to her. The night was where she was given the North Star, and by extension, hope.

It seemed like every wish she hadn't dared make aloud came true. Every secret wanting she'd buried deep in the hidden corners of her soul.

'The difficultly lies in how to make what you wish for a reality.'

The quote had become an echo in her mind in the most unexpected ways. As it turned out, the difficulty wasn't in making her wish a reality, but reality itself. Her mother was right. Madeline had always loved Elijah in such an intense way, no amount of time or distance could lessen it. It'd been innocent, but no less genuine or full-hearted.

The boy next door who she'd seen smile and cry. Laugh and scream. Above all, suffer. Elijah had tried her best to shelter her from the truth of his life, but he'd never been able to hide himself from her. There was no hiding the bruised face, or cracked ribs.

Now he was back.

What should have been a relationship starting from scratch turned out be a rekindling. Time had come and gone through both their lives. He'd gone from a boy of eighteen to a thirty-year-old man. She'd gone from a small child to a woman with only one year of college remaining. There was a vast gap in time where they'd gone without one another's guidance or support, without one another's shoulder's to weep against when life felt unbearable.

So why was it so easy to still love him with her heart wide open after he'd broken it to pieces twelve years earlier? Why did his shoulder still feel so inviting, his smile feel so infectious, his pain feel so unbearable? Why, after so many years of his absence, did she still need him, when he should have felt only a step above a stranger to her?

"You disappeared," His voice came out just a step above a whisper, but she'd felt him before he ever uttered those two words.

Madeline's eyes once against drifted to that North Star, the symbol of home and him. After she spoke to her mother, she almost dared to make a new wish; one that would send him away before she lost her heart to him forever.

There was no greater truth than the one spoken in her bedroom. The love she felt for the boy who became a man would evolve into the sort of love that changed the course of life. That defining love altered you forever. So far, it was only a small tug Madeline could pretend wasn't there. But the love that came from innocence and spanned across time was something couldn't defeat.

"Are you going to break my heart, Elijah?"

His sneaker squeaked across the wet grass as he neared her. "I'm guessing your mom had a similar conversation with you that your dad had with me."

His words didn't surprise her. Dinner had been uncomfortably quiet. A sprinkle of polite conversation and asking Elijah about his life, but that was the extent of it.

"What did your talk sound like?" Madeline asked him.

A few more squeaks of his sneakers, then he laid down next to her, his eyes remaining on the sky. "He told me about what you went through after I left, and how you snuck outside in the middle of the night to look at that damn star. He's worried that me leaving again is going to cause you more pain than they can stand to watch. Letters and calls won't be enough, short visits will just be repeated heartbreaks.

"He said he loved having me here, and that he never stopped loving me like a son, but with how close we've already gotten, how comfortable we are with each other after a day, will only get bigger and make the crash more unbearable for you. A part of him's trying to protect you, while the other part is letting him hope."

"Hope for what?" Madeline asked. She assumed she knew, based on her mother's words to her, but she wanted to hear Elijah say it. She needed to study him as he spoke those words to her, looking for any sign their her parent's hopes were a possibility or a dream never to become a reality.

"When I left, it took a while to create a life for myself, but I did. Starting over from scratch wasn't easy, but I found my way, and I've done okay for myself. But no place ever felt like home to me. I have friends I care about, but I keep at a distance because that's what I do. I did the same thing with every potential relationship. One foot in the heart, so to speak, but never all the way let in. Your parents have every right to be worried, Maddie. I had to close myself off enough to protect my mind, even if I couldn't protect my body.

"The thing of it is, I was never able to do that with you. I tried to, so many goddamn times. If I kept you at a distance, maybe the hurt you saw me go through wouldn't spill over onto you. But it never worked. I was eighteen when I left, and my best friend had always been this little girl with a smile that took up half her face, and puffy pigtails that made her head look twice as big as it was. I'm older now, obviously, but you're still my best friend. You never stopped being my best friend.

"You asked me why I never wrote you letters, already knowing the answer to that, but the truth is, I did. I've got a box in my trunk full of letters I never sent you. And do you remember why I didn't send them to you?"

They'd just had this conversation earlier, so she wasn't sure why he was confirming it now. "Because I would have asked you to come back."

"And why couldn't I come back, Maddie?"

"Because of your father?" She wasn't sure why she'd said it like a question.

Elijah sat up, looking down at her as he spoke the next words. "My father's dead. The devil took his sweet ass time, but he can never hurt me again, never make me feel worthless again, and I can't kill him a second time.

"So now you can ask the question I never gave you a chance to ask."

It was then Madeline's own body shot up, feeling the chill of her damp clothes nip at her back. The words wouldn't come to her. No word was able to enter her brain for more than a fleeting moment.

"Yours is the only heart I can't bare to break. I get that you don't live here, and that you're going back to college in the fall for your last year. I can take my time fixing the house, take a construction job here while I'm working on it to keep my head above water. That house next to yours has never been my home. It was my goddamn purgatory most of the time. But this town? It has my favorite people in world living in it. It's where my family is. I don't know what your plans are after you graduate, but-"

"Earlier today, I'd thought about that. Stratford was where you were, and there are a lot of job opportunities there. But I thought if I said it out loud, it would seem pushy."

Elijah smiled. "No more pushy than what I'm doing now."

Unfortunately, what Elijah was talking about was their friendship and family. "Did my dad mention anything else in that conversation?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, his smile changing but not disappearing completely. "I guess both your parents noticed we were a little too casual about their teasing. I was fine being caught in bed with you, had a smile on my face when I carried you through the doorway. When they teased us about getting married and giving them a grandchild, we went with it. Neither of us looked mortified they'd even dare suggest that. So I get where they're coming from.

"I know they're worried about me breaking your heart in every way possible, M&M, and that's fair. If I hurt you that bad the first time, when it was a friendship love we lost, then they're right to point out how much more this'll hurt if it becomes that other sort of love.

"The thing is, they're worried because they think I'm going to leave you again, and they'll have to be the ones to help you pick up the pieces. But I will never let anyone hurt you again, Maddie, and that includes me. I'd rather cut off my arm than bring you that sort of pain."

This time, he didn't wait for a response she couldn't form. Instead, Elijah stood from the ground and held out his hand for her to take. "It's late, M&M. Let's go to bed."